


Touch Me

by bettertoflee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: ...at least I hope, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Rey's Freckles, Vaginal Fingering, Wherein the author realizes she is a bit obsessed with hands, Who will cry first?, i promise it will get better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-08 21:27:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17988806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettertoflee/pseuds/bettertoflee
Summary: Stained.That is what his mother always called it. The technical nomenclature had never mattered much, though he'd heard other words for the anomaly. Kinder words. Words which did not leave him feeling damaged.Leia had been right though, like always. He certainly felt stained.All throughout his formative years, he was reminded of what a gift it was for his life to be inherently tied to someone else's. To be meant for something bigger, something outside himself."Those blots," she would start, pulling his hand until his fingers were bent back, just enough to make his palm face the stars, laid open for the world to see... "They don't belong to you." It was a mother's grip, firm and confident in the message being transferred from her skin to his. Before she let go of his hand, she would run her own fingers across the inky stains, envy flashing hot behind her eyes. "Not everyone is so lucky."Luck—destiny...he wasn't convinced in either.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was spawned from a TWD prompt by [SpaceWaffleHouseTM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM) wherein she referenced [this](https://volcanh0e.tumblr.com/post/173574842160/the-ghost-of-keith-kogane-fandangoing-okay) Tumblr post. 
> 
> Shortly after I started writing this, I had a certain brief conversation on Twitter where Billie Eilish was brought up and that ended up drastically changing the entire tone. So. If you're looking for a good song to get you in the mood...click [here](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwik4MaQ-ebgAhUD7oMKHUgZDiEQFjAAegQIBxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fopen.spotify.com%2Falbum%2F2DfPdWWXknoGKrfa2Eicyw&usg=AOvVaw1m96T_k2cyXejvtrIGqXKZ). 
> 
> Finally, many thanks to [Daisyflo/Reylolujah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daisyflo) for giving this first chapter a beta read and telling me if I was going crazy or not.

Every science journal published after the turn of the century claimed that if you were marked by the end of puberty, you had a ninety-six percent chance of meeting your soulmate by the age of thirty.

Statistics.

Numbers don’t lie.

At present, Ben was two years past that.

He’d been marked since the ripe age of twelve and had endured his fair share of chiding over the little charcoal splatter etched across his hand—each digit like a barcode waiting to be scanned. Even so, he hadn’t been resentful of the marking. Not at first.

Ben might have had an easier time accepting the stain and the potential it held if he felt like he belonged in his own skin, but that wasn’t a feeling he was familiar with. Most days, he didn’t feel like he deserved to be a part of his own life, much less someone else’s.

Since it had appeared, and before that (though Ben thought time before and after the marking to be ideologically incomparable), he had only ever met one other person who’d shared a similar mark. A ninety-six percent chance of meeting your soulmate—and yet in twenty-some years, he was no closer to finding his than he might have been without a mark at all. Theoretically speaking, he might have had _better_ luck finding a girl if he didn’t have a mark.

That was something no one wasted time writing or talking about: the downside of being stained—the ugly, unromantic aspect of being told that there is one person meant specifically for you. There’s absolutely nothing liberating about that. Nothing enchanting. If anything, it was a stifling kind of entrapment to walk through life knowing that a part of you was missing and there was no sure-fire way of finding it.

* * *

 

“I want you to meet someone,” Poe says over the noise of the crowd. He pushes through the mass of people and Ben follows. He’s close enough that Poe’s shouting sounds too loud on his ears, but there’s still enough distance that the usual onslaught of cologne is muted, which is something. Honestly, it’s something that Ben is here in the first place.

The crowd breaks and the noise dies down and despite the fact that his oxygen intake has not been compromised in the way it _usually_ is, it’s not until there is space around him, room for his too-broad shoulders to move without knocking into someone, that Ben feels like he can _breathe_. He’s about to ask for clarification on that statement—the why behind the introduction, the expectations that might follow it (he’s not looking for a relationship) (dating is not something he does) (neither is engaging with people)—but before he can form the words, Poe’s eyes grow wide and Ben feels someone’s body press into his from behind. More specifically, someone’s ass pressed firmly against his own. The contact might have sent anyone else reeling forward or staggering to the side, but he’s a brick wall and the act hardly makes him move.

Which means when she presses into him, _she presses into him._

“Fuck.”

The way she says it is breathy, like a cloud settled too close to the ground. The expletive is followed by a peel of laughter and a deeper baritone joins hers. Ben turns to find the woman’s back is still toward him. It’s a small gift, the opportunity to appraise her without her knowledge. Ten years ago he might have felt guilty over the way his eyes drift past her shoulders and land on her ass. The same one which had been pinned against his a moment ago. He lets himself imagine that very ass pinned against him from the other direction, wedged against his hips by his hand, which would span the width of her abdomen. The image he conjures in his head is filthy—suffocating. The very last thing he needs.

The feeling of reprieve that came with exiting the crowd is short lived.

She turns to face him and her hand darts up to cover her mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

Her accent fills these words full of air in the same way. She has one of those smiles that shows a lot of teeth and her mouth is spread so far open as she continues to laugh that he can see the corners peeking out on either side of her hand. She is the inverse of whatever he is—made up of everything he isn’t. The man beside her slings an arm over her shoulder and in that moment, Ben recognizes both of them from the framed photos on Poe’s desk. He must be Finn and she…

“This is Rey,” Poe says. He claps a hand over Ben’s shoulder, gives it a little shake, as if they’re sharing something no one else is privy to.

So, it’s like that.

All the clarification he was lacking a moment ago is summed up in one single act. This is meant to be a set-up. It is, no doubt, an attempt at softening him, at humanizing him. Poe’s been doing it since they were kids and it's the main reason Ben typically declines any kind of offer to hang out. He might be damaged goods, but he's not a fucking charity case.

He's heard about Rey. Though, now that she's in front of him and he's trying to recall something about her, he's realizing he hasn't paid much actual attention in the past.

In the two seconds which pass before she sticks out her hand, fully expecting him to extend his in return, he makes an assessment of the situation. How much Poe has told her, he can't be sure, but the second he takes his hands out his pockets, there will be questions, and he will be expected to provide answers.

He holds out his right hand like he's ripping off a band-aid and there's no telling what kind of look is written across his face, but judging by the way Rey's own features falter and by the way Finn's arm drops from her shoulders to awkwardly cross in front of his chest, defensive, he must look as stony as he feels.

"Ben," he says in way of introduction, even and cold.

It was a mistake to have come out at all. He'd known from the second Poe invited him, but for some reason, he'd allowed himself to be talked into it. Rey—bless her—draws her shoulders back a fraction of an inch (the action so small it is entirely possible no one else even notices) and she commits to taking his hand. Her fingers are delicate beneath his, but they're not dwarfed the way some people's are. It is a relief in a way, to feel that she's not shrinking away from him. For most people, it's more a reflex than a conscious decision. He would hardly blame her. He'd shrink away from himself if it were possible.

"It's nice to meet you," she says, letting go of his hand and bringing her own up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

Finn's eyes are on the black leather that covers his right hand and Rey's are pointedly looking anywhere but. It's not the first time Ben has received this kind of reaction from people he's meeting for the first time, but it is the first time he finds he cares. Even so, no one is saying a word and that is perhaps more painful than the fact that the staring is happening at all.

He doesn't give them the satisfaction of an explanation and for some reason, be it that he's already told them or will tell them later, Poe doesn't take the time to address it in this moment either.

The glove is a necessary evil, not something he chooses. It's the better of two unfavorable options.

Black leather or a black stain. Either way, he is the shadows of night embodied. People hesitate to touch him—afraid of what might come from physically connecting themselves to him, even if the duration of that connection is as fine as a hairline fracture. The only way to ensure he doesn't allow the damaged part of himself to bleed onto someone else is the glove.

 

Stained.

 

That is what his mother always called it. The technical nomenclature had never mattered much, though he'd heard other words for the anomaly. Kinder words. Words which did not leave him feeling damaged.

Leia had been right though, like always. He certainly felt _stained._

All throughout his formative years, he was reminded of what a gift it was for his life to be inherently tied to someone else's. To be meant for something bigger, something outside himself.

"Those blots," she would start, pulling his hand until his fingers were bent back, just enough to make his palm face the stars, laid open for the world to see... "They don't belong to you." It was a mother's grip, firm and confident in the message being transferred from her skin to his. Before she let go of his hand, she would run her own fingers across the inky stains, envy flashing hot behind her eyes. "Not everyone is so lucky."

Luck—destiny...he wasn't convinced in either.

Leia was proud of what he'd been given. Ever the politician, she used his standing to advocate for the rest of the world, but in all her hard work to save the nameless and the faceless, she'd somehow managed to forget the one she called her son. Han was hardly around enough to notice anything at all, but Ben was fairly certain that, were he there to let his standing be known, the outcome wouldn't have been any better.

He's practiced at appearing as if he doesn't care what anyone thinks, but that doesn't mean he lacks actual feelings.

He hesitates for a moment, looking between the three of them, waiting for someone else to talk first, but when no one does, he clears his throat and tries for something.

"I'm getting a drink."

He should offer to get something for Rey. Or the rest of them. But he doesn't.

Instead, he shoves the gloved hand back into his pocket where it belongs and braces himself for the crowd again, eyes trained steady on the bar ahead.

* * *

He's swirling two fingers of whiskey in a slow circle around the spherical cube at the bottom of his glass when she saddles up next to him. He smells her before he sees her, a warm, sweaty kind of heaven. Senses she's about to say something before she speaks. Granted, when she does, it's not to him. Her hand is raised as she leans around a pair of drunk girls beside them in order to gain the attention of the bartender. 

"I'll have the same," she says, nodding her head toward his glass.

"Wouldn't have pegged you for a whisky girl."

He cringes a little, inwardly of course, at the way that sounds out loud. _Whisky girl_. As if she is the same as the two beside them. He doesn’t have to know her to know she’s more than most women.

She doesn't look at him. He raises his glass and takes a sip, the amber liquid smokier than what he generally drinks. She has both her hands pressed firmly to the bar, perhaps steadying herself, maybe practicing restraint.

"You wouldn't peg me for a lot of things."

He can barely hear her over the other people talking around them. It takes all his composure to remain facing forward, holding her match-for-match in this little battle of wills. Carefully, out of the corner of his eye, Ben lets himself drink her. 

She is tall, her shoulders coming reasonably close to his own, granted he is seated and she is standing, but it’s nice. To think of being on an equal playing field with someone… A tremor shoots down his right arm and settles in the tips of his fingers, warmth spreading through them. He clenches his hand into a fist and steadies it against the bar top, hoping against all odds that she doesn’t notice. Her gaze is following the bartender as he fills her glass with ice and pours enough whiskey to rival his own. There are freckles along the bridge of her nose that catch in the low light of the bar. The thought of freckles dusting other curves of her body, other cheeks, other plaines of perfectly white, warm skin…

At some point he must have turned his head and started full-on staring because when she finally lets her eyes drift over to meet his, there is a flutter of interest in the quirk of her mouth.

Ben knows he’s been caught.

When the bartender places the glass in front of her, he expects that she'll take it and leave, but she doesn't. Instead, she takes a finger and traces the rim of the glass, getting lost in her own reflection.

"Poe, he..." Something stops her from continuing. She takes a drink and he has to give her the credit she's due—the whisky might as well be water. "You think if you reject me, you'll break my heart. You won't."

She takes another sip, this time longer. Her tongue drags along the inside of her lips as she pulls the glass away from her mouth. The way she's still refusing to actually make eye contact with him, that one quick glance aside, it’s fucking with his head.

Ben's mouth is dry—not because of her candidness (if anything, that is refreshing)—but because of the things he wants to do to her.

"I'm sorry." The words sound foreign on his lips; there's no way she misses it.

"You don't have to be," she says, finally— _finally_ —turning to face him, and in all honesty, he might have preferred it when she wasn’t. "That's what I'm saying. You don't have to be anything."

The woman standing next to him isn't the same woman he'd been introduced to ten minutes ago. Something in her eyes has changed, like a light had been extinguished the second he excused himself. There is _life_ in her in a way most people can hardly even imagine. He can still see it. Ben doesn't know what to do with the information she's giving him.

This isn't something he does. _For a reason_. 

"I'll only hurt you."

Rey takes a step forward. "You won't."

"I will." He holds up his hand, the one that's covered in leather, the one holding his drink. "You don't know the half of it."

They are at eye level with one another, him seated and her standing. She's so close he can feel warmth radiating off her skin, make out the individual hairs that have begun to curl around her temples.

"I don't care," she says.

With those same delicate hands, she reaches out and takes the glass that's in his hand, bringing it to her lips and downing its contents all at once. He doesn't let his eyes leave hers. He couldn't break them away even if he tried.

"Trust me," she whispers, placing his glass back on the counter with a thud and reaching for her own. "There's nothing you could possibly do that's worse than what's already been done."

Ben catches Poe's eye over Rey's shoulder for a half second. He's dazed and happy, lost in Finn and the commotion around them. Oblivious to the conversation happening just a few feet away.

 

He follows her out of the bar and into a cab. They're at her apartment before he takes the time to think about what he's doing. Ben has no idea what it says about him that he's hardly considered the ramifications of what he's about to do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi! 
> 
> Tumblr [bettertoflee](http://bettertoflee.tumblr.com/)  
> Twitter [bettertoflee](https://twitter.com/bettertoflee)


	2. Chapter 2

Rey doesn’t turn on any of the lights as they move down the hallway toward the living room. There is a lamp in the distance that casts the room in a hazy kind of half-glow and it’s enough for them to feel their way around the furniture until her back is to her bedroom door, his hands gripping her hips.

She thinks briefly, between sucking his bottom lip and trailing her hands through the greying hair at his temples, that it might have been a mistake to walk over like she knew what she was doing, taking that drink out of his hand and downing it when she had just ordered her own. She doesn’t know him and he certainly doesn’t owe her anything.

And, from what Poe’s suggested over the past few years, he’s likely more work than she needs.

The glove though. That had sparked something in her. A pleasure—of sorts.

The harder she’d tried not to think about it, the harder it had become to keep herself from gawking like a school girl. She felt dirty in a sense, knowing that what she was doing was speculative and voyeuristic. She’d be using him. There was no way around that. But, maybe there was a chance he’d be open to using her too. The longer she kept herself from looking at the glove in an attempt to keep from thinking of how it would feel against her skin, the further her mind started to wander.

Eventually there was no chance of reigning the possibility back in.

It wasn’t about satisfaction; not really. Seeing that glove was like a get out of jail free card. There were no obligations. She knew what lay beneath—what _had_ to lay beneath it—but it didn’t matter, because she was clean and he was tied to someone who wasn’t her.

And there was a freedom in that.

The whole ordeal is supposed to be pretty straightforward, or so she’s been told. You’re either stained or you aren’t. There’s a fifty-fifty chance you’re one of the lucky ones, and “lucky” is subjective, which kind of opens the odds. The movies always make it out to be more romantic than it seems to be in reality, but then again, the movies also make it seem like every other person you meet on the street has a black stain waiting to be shocked into violent technicolor. From what she can tell, that just isn’t the case. While it’s entirely possible for some that soulmates and true love are just around the corner, waiting on destiny’s doorstep, she’s just…not one of them.

And most days, that’s really okay, because you can’t be abandoned by someone you never belonged to.

It’s a weak argument, but so it true love.

She isn’t in the market for a fairytale and forever is overrated.

Ben’s hands skim the hem of her shirt and the pads of each finger on his left hand might as well brand her skin in a mark all their own, because it’s like nothing she’s ever felt before. The very oxygen which should be filling her lungs gets lodged somewhere in her throat and emanates in a breathy gust of air against the soft flesh of his neck.

He’s being more gentle with her than she anticipated and gentle isn’t what she’s after.

Finn is gentle with her. _Poe_ is gentle with her. And, really, even if they _were_ in a position to provide the kind of attention she’s craving, she doesn’t think they’d have it in them. What Rey needs is to _feel_. Preferably until she forgets.

Feeling without obligation.

No strings.

No stains.

At least, none that hold any bearing on her future.

The look he’d given her as he excused himself after their introduction was all she’d needed to make her decision.

She isn’t a sadist or a narcissist—but she isn’t a saint either.

Her fingers are at his collar before he has a chance to survey the rest of her apartment. He’s nipping at her neck and the scent coming off his skin, off his hair, it’s like a drug. Spice and the outdoors and something else. There is a muskiness to him that can only be described by the heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach; in the way it coats the back of her throat. She throws all caution to the wind and drags her tongue over that same soft patch of his neck she’d been warming with her breath a moment ago. A deep, guttural sound breaks loose inside him and Rey can’t help but smile, a sickening satisfaction and a healthy dose of determination.

She’ll get ten times that out of him before the night’s over.

Ben dips his head until it’s resting in the crook of her shoulder, buried beneath her hair. Every inhale to the skin behind her ear sucks the life right out of her. 

“What is this?” he asks between biting and sucking at the soft flesh above her collarbone. The deepness of his voice combined with the steadiness of his grip on her waist is almost enough to bring her to climax.

Rey has to physically steady herself against him in order to formulate a coherent thought and form the words that will speak it into existence.

“Nothing,” she says. He knips a little at her skin then the warmth of his tongue covers the mark he’s surely left in a blanket of tenderness. It’s a perfect kind of dichotomy. Her breath catches and a caught little noise escapes her throat. “Just sex,” she says again, sure in her response. The words are quick, almost clipping. She drags herself away, placing her hands on his chest and pushing until he’s far enough back that she can look him in the eye. 

“Poe said you could use a good fuck and I’ve had a shit week. A few of them, actually. Are…are you okay with that?”

He draws back and it’s only then that Rey realizes moving a building might have been easier. Now that there’s actual space between their bodies and the cool air pumping through the vents has room to cool her, it’s evident that she hadn’t really pushed him away at all. She could kick herself. She can already feel the wetness between her thighs drying. Her shoulders deflate a little and the she lets herself slump against the door. She pulls her lips together, thoughtful, and really surveys his features. The angles of his brow and the bridge of his nose combined with the light (or lack thereof) cast shadows across his face. It unsettles her just a little.

It’s fitting for who he seems to be and Rey—Rey isn’t opposed to the implication of it all.

“It’s okay,” she tries, not exactly defensive, but there is certainly no gentleness in her tone. “It’s okay to need a fuck once in a while. And…” her eyes actually travel down toward his hand for the first time since meeting him. “It’s okay to change your mind too, if you want.”

He shakes his head and it’s at least enough to help her breathe again. “I’m not changing my mind,” he says quietly.

There is a beat.

Both of them stand in silence, both of them contemplating the steps they’ll take next—where they’ll lead them and what will come after.

“Okay.” Rey takes a deep breath and nods her head. “Okay then.” The whiskey pools a little between her eyes. She can still feel her teeth, which is a good sigh, and the corners of her mouth only tingle a little. She’s not drunk, but if they’d stayed at the bar for another drink, she might be close. “I’m…you don’t have to worry.” She nods her head downward. His eyes follow and there is understanding between them. “But…” Rey clears her throat. “I want you to leave it on.”

It’s like a switch flips.

All the unspoken weight of the glove and where it puts them—where it leaves them—it’s wiped off the table the second she speaks.

In the half second it takes for him to lean back into her something changes. He’s different from the man she met less than an hour ago. There wasn’t a lot of real reservation in him from the start, but there was some. He’d been holding back at least a little—in order to impress her—in order to appease Poe. In order to keep himself hanging in the balance of who Poe has told her he can be and who Poe has told her he tries to be when other people are around.

Whatever the reason, he’d been trying to exude some level of composure.

Bringing up the glove sets him free, and like she suspected, like Poe suggested, they’re two sides of the same coin.

A bloody, boiling, bubbling mess of chaos and loneliness. Chasing after something—anything.

He dives out and takes hold of her hips, a man on a mission, and tucks his chin to his sternum as he does so, a tight, quick nod. There is a fire in his eyes and desire in the way the pads of his thumbs brush over the curve of her hip bone as he brings them further up the side of her body.

“Wasn’t going to take it off anyway,” he says. His voice is rough, heavy and uneven. He pulls her to him and resumes his feast at the apex of her neck, lapping lightly over the spot where a bruise is no doubt already starting to form.

Rey is sweaty. Her neck must be glistening with it.

Ben laps up every last drop.

 _“Good_ ,” she says, almost too quiet for him to hear, the word catching on her tongue as he continues to work away at her. It’s something she says, not to him, but to herself. A confirmation of sorts. An agreement. This is what she’s been after.

One of his hands comes up to skim the other side of her neck, each of his fingers dragging along the edge of her hairline until they’re buried three knuckles deep in the length of it. He wraps the strands together and tugs. It’s a kiss in itself, the act so delicate she hardly notices the fact that he’s drawing her to do whatever he wants. Not too rough, but rough enough. Rough enough to elicit a soft intake of breath and leave her struggling to steady her pulse—only for a moment, but that’s all she needs to remember that she can feel something if given the opportunity.

She leans back and lets her head and shoulders sink against the wall behind her. As she does, something in his face catches her off guard. The way he’s looking at her is troubling. There’s a glimmer behind the darkness of his pupils.

His mouth has abandoned its task at her neck and moves to the hollow of her ear.

“You taste…” Her knees drop out from under her and he is there for the catch. She’s in his arms with her legs wrapped tight around his waist, back pressed against the wall, before she even has time to process what he’s said. Surely he can feel her heat at his hips. Surely he can feel how ragged she is through the way her breasts are moving in rhythm against him. It is intoxicating, the way he pulls her forward, pushing her up the wall at the same time, crashing her lips against his in desperation.

It sets her skin on fire.

She’s heady and dizzy from how quick everything is happening and how all consuming it happens to be. She had expected the warm swell at the pit of her stomach, _she_ _just_ _hadn’t_ _expected_ _to like it._

He’s out of breath when they unlock for air and it gives her just enough time to catch her own from where it’s been lodged somewhere in the cavity of her chest.

“Let me see the rest of you,” he says, nipping again at the spot below her ear.

Rey’s body betrays her and a mewling sound works its way up from her toes.

Those seven words ignite something in her.

He’s not nameless or faceless, that much she’d known when she bombarded him at the bar. Before then, even. There are plenty of things that tie them to one another—an entire person, though Poe is really inconsequential. She knows he and Ben have more history that chemistry and suspects they’d both be more than willing to pretend this night, the whole introduction, never happened.

Ben’s grip loosens on her and he lets her glide gently down the wall until her feet are planted firmly on the ground. It’s enough to bring her out of her thoughts and back to reality.

“Are you okay?”

She nods and tries to put words to the voices in her head.

That part of him she’d seen hiding in his eyes, even if it was only a glimmer of something…her gaze involuntarily drifts back to the hand at her waist, the one that’s covered in leather. He flinches and pulls both his hands away from her. The loss of them sets a chill across her skin and she moves her arms to cross her chest.

That part of him…if left untreated…

She’s clean. She’s aged out. But she’s putting everything at risk getting involved with someone like him. Someone…someone she feels a connection with, even if it’s mostly physical. Because at the end of the day, the odds are against them. He’ll meet whoever it is that holds his match and their lives will ignite and Rey…Rey will be right where she’s always been.

Here, in this apartment, alone.

He hardens at the way she’s eyed his hand. His face stills and the excitement that had been there a moment before seems to have dwindled, if not entirely, at least noticeably.

“I told you I would only hurt you,” he says, starting to draw back again.

Rey’s eyes snap up to meet his and she can feel the moment slipping away.

It’s now or it’s nothing.

“You won’t.” She’s reassuring herself as much as him.

There is a beat. A whole lifetime unfolds in the silent look they share. Ben’s head is angled in such a way that his hair falls forward, threatening to cover his eyes. Rey reaches up and pushes it behind his ear, letting her fingers traces its curvature. Something in him hardens, setting his shoulders rigid. He shudders and pulls away from her touch, but she moves with him, just as solid in her grounding as he is.

“You know I can take whatever I want?” It’s a whisper. More sad than threatening. Rey hardly knows how to respond, so she doesn’t. The best she can do is draw her mouth closed from where it’s hanging open. The question should scare her. She should be running for the hills, dialing Poe or Finn or the police. She should be acting on the years and years of self-defense training she’s obtained, the same training she’s had to put into action in scenarios not so dissimilar to this very one.

But _the way_ he says it. The brokenness. She doesn’t run and she can hardly explain why.

He shakes his head as he continues to look down at her. That look she’d seen in his eye is there again and fuck if it doesn’t do something to her. He hasn’t looked away yet and even though she can tell it’s the last thing he wants, he hasn’t forced her touch to abandon him. He’s waiting—for a reaction, a response, _something_.

Rey’s heart is in her throat and her pulse is in her ears and she is absolutely on end.

He lets his head lean into her open hand. The words that leave his lips are a whisper on the night.“Just because I can’t doesn’t mean that I will.”

“I—” Rey makes a decision she’ll regret later. “You don’t have to. You don’t have to take anything.”

And, just like that it’s done.

She’s wrapped around his hips again, his head buried in her neck and her hands raking marks across his scalp. She devours those ears and he lets her.

Before he drops her to the bed, she swears she hears him mutter something into the hollow of her collarbone.

It sounds strikingly like, _don’t you know I’m no good for you?_

All Rey can think as he sheds her of the clothes which stand between them is that he’s stolen the words right out of her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi! 
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	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated in preparation for this chapter. It's nothing too serious or graphic...

When there’s nothing standing between them but the stark, naked skin they were born with, save for the offending thing on his hand, Ben lays Rey back on the bed and kneels at her feet, making his way up her body in slow, delicate drags of his lips. Her skin is warm like honey in steamed milk. She is pliant beneath him, her hands making small work of his hair.

When he followed her out the door of the bar and into the cab, and then again in reverse once they reached her apartment, he thought this would be a quick, over-and-done-with kind of thing. But it isn’t.

Ben undoes her like she’s a fucking Fibonacci sequence. Every careful placement of his hands meant to unfold her like the mathematical embodiment of perfection she is.

“God, you’re stunning.”

He crawls up until he’s positioned over her body. His mouth is against her sternum—she sits in the hollow beneath his tongue and ruminates there. Ben toys at her skin with this teeth, curling his lips back until the edges of each white key can rake against the supple plane. He can feel the outline of her below him and he almost forgets that she’s a complete stranger.

“What do you like?”

He meant the question to be thoughtful, to put her at ease. There had been something about the way she looked at him in the hall, the hesitant way he’d lost her to her own thoughts, which made him wary of how serious she was. This has to be on her terms, not his. She had been the one to approach him and they’re at her place.

Ben needs her to make the calls.

Instead of answering, she drops away from him and sits up on her elbows. Her eyes squint together as she thoughtfully surveys him.

“What?”

Ben clears his throat and leans back to sit on his knees. It’s an awkward, vulnerable position to be in, out and completely at her will, even though he dwarfs her. Even though she’s sitting there, struck like a deer in the headlights, a fawn to his yearning. She looks especially small in this darkness with the light is filtering in through the window, an airy moonlit sonata of shadow and starlight.

“I want this to be good for you,” he tries. “What do you like?”

Her lips purse, one little forward motion. He can see the calculations taking place inside her head, can tell that they’re louder than the words she’s been mumbling to herself all night. She’s thinking more than she’ll ever say.

Ben’s whole face drops with each passing second that she continues to hold her words ransom, a silent observance to the quandary unfolding inside her. He could watch her come undone: beneath him, beside him, up against the wall outside her room or here on her bed. Finally, she works her brow into a firm line across her forehead, the two sides pinched so closely togetherthey’re almost one.

“Don’t worry about that,” she says, shaking her head. She leans off her elbows and sits up, mirroring his state on the bed, each of them just as exposed as the other. “Here…” She takes hold of his hands and draws him further into the center of the bed.

Her voice is so quiet Ben can hardly hear her. The cadence with which she speaks implies a meaning fully incongruent with what he has been expecting all of this to unfold.

“Close your eyes,” she says carefully.

She pulls him closer like her very life depends on him being there and that’s when it happens. Ben’s breathing begins to pick up to the point where he can hear the steady pulses in the space between his ears where his brain should be. Of course, it’s empty (save for the beating), because all coherent thought has found another place to exist outside of him.

He has spent years and thousands of dollars in order for this to not be a problem, and yet here he is. Naked, save for the goddamn glove, and falling apart before a single thing has happened. He can practically hear her now, recounting the whole gruesome event to Poe the following Sunday over brunch.

_You should have seen the way he choked—and not in a good way. There were tears in his eyes. I’ve gone through three separate partners just trying to get the image of him out of my head._

Her grip on his hand was firm and that was the only thing keeping him from retreating, from pealing himself off the bed and running for the door before she has the chance to laugh. His mother was right after all. No amount of therapy or leather could tear him away from reality. It just really sucked coming to that realization when you were about eight inches away from getting laid. 

Regardless, Ben does as he’s told.

Rey thumbs across the back of his naked hand, her touch as sure as the sun across an afternoon sky as it finds the peaks of his knuckles and forms shadows beside them. Their flesh is married in the simplest of ways, touching each other like neighbors, and yet Ben has never felt so vulnerable.

Eventually, she brings it up to rest in the middle of her chest. He can feel the rise and fall of her beneath his palm. Her breathing is shallow, a little empty. His eyes are still closed but it makes his other senses more alert. He can tell, just from this: it would not take long to break her, nor much. She’s chasing something. Asking him to help her find it.

They’re so very similar and it terrifies him.

She’s a daydream within a nightmare—the very image of everything he ever could have asked for, and yet, rudimentarily the one thing he cannot allow himself to want.

They stay like that for a few seconds, his arm outstretched, flesh to flesh, her breathing steadily beneath him. Matching his own. Par for par. Tit for tat. A balance of equilibrium amongst the chaos which surrounds them. Ben memorizes the feel of her pulse as it flows from her chest through his palm and into his own veins, fueling the beat of his own heart.

When she removes his hand and places it gently to his side once more, it takes the breath right out of him.

“Don’t open your eyes yet,” she says—except, there is a catch in her throat. His lids flutter but she’s quick with the draw and places her own hand to shield his vision. “Don’t.” He doesn’t need to see her to know there are wet trails of salt making their way down her cheeks.

Ben makes a promise to himself in that moment, the very second that threat cuts out, wet and sloppy and broken. When this is all said and done and she’s made her point, he’s going to find every goddamn freckle on her body and kiss it until the very pattern of her flesh is etched across the bow of his lips.

When her hand drops from his eyes, he keeps them closed. She trails a ginger-light hand down his arm and picks up his right hand, moving it until he’s taken up that vacated place below her neck.

It takes literally every fiber of his being not to pull back, find his clothes where they’re scattered across the floor and redress, leave her sitting there on her fucking bed doing whatever the hell kind of reverse breath-play this is by herself.

But then she takes a deeper breath and he can feel the way her chest steadies a little between the shakes. She breathes again and he tries to hear what she isn’t saying. His hand, the involuntary thing, twitches again but this time he can’t draw it into a fist the way he wants to.

Rey wets her lips. He can hear her tongue as it runs across her lips, consuming the tears in a canibalistic attempt at self-preservation.

“Can you feel it?”

She’s _so quiet_ , but he hears her. It doesn’t matter if he can’t see her. Their hearts beat in the same rhythm and mark or none, she has not fallen to pieces beneath his touch. There is more here than he could have possibly seen or known. More than he might have given her credit for. If he pulls hard enough, if he looks deep enough, he might see her yet, but…that isn’t what this is about and that’s the whole point of it anyway, right?

“I’m bleeding,” she says quietly. “You don’t have to fix it, just…stop it. That’s all I need. Just for a little while.”

His hand snakes around to the back of her neck and he pulls her in tight against him. Her lips are on his in a matter of seconds, a sob stifled somewhere at the back of her throat. She trails her tongue against the curve of his lips seeking entrance and when he secedes, she drinks the life from him until she’s full.

He’d let her suck him dry if she needed.

 

It isn’t easy to slip inside. She is wet enough for both of them and there is plenty of want, but he is as big as he is broad and if she is the day, he is the darkness that fills it at night.

He glides a finger between her legs, prepping her for what is to come, but he doesn’t need to force an attempt to know he’ll never make it in without hurting her at least a little.

“Turn over.” He trails his nose from beneath her earlobe to the dip of her collarbone then nips at her neck, an almost loving gesture that doesn’t seem fitting for two people who are, by all accounts, using one another. 

She finds a position on her knees that keeps her hips in line with his and she arches her back until it slopes. He can fill each of his palms with the lush curves of her ass, a perfect fit. He stoops to meet her and nibbles at the skin beneath his hands, remembering the feel of it as she’d pressed against him in the bar earlier that night.

He was right about the freckles. They’resprinkled across her skin, like he knew they would be, and its a sight he won’t ever be able to banish from his mind. An idealistic parallel from top to bottom. Ben traces a picture, connecting each little dot, before using his tongue to warm the chill he’s left behind.

A soft moan escapes her lips and he draws one hand up to part her—the other, the one with the glove, comes to rest at the small of her back, pushing her down until she is truly flat against the mattress—truly open and ready for him. He strokes her a few times before laving at the ready flesh and adding another finger. He presses his fingers along her front wall, firm and gentle and sure and makes a steady pace there, reveling in her undoing. The sound of come on her lips is caught at the back of her throat and Ben watches, drinking in every second as he continues to curl his fingers, making perfect, steady tracks, bringing her toward release.

Rey practically claws at the sheets as she presses back toward his mouth and his hands, chasing what he won’t give her.

Ben is very seriously considering keeping her here, like this, until the earth goes up in flames, and he isn’t even inside her yet. There are worse ways to go.

He can taste how close she is.

Just before she has a second to ride it out, he gives one final stroke with his tongue and removes his fingers. He parts her legs and eases her down until her pelvis is flush against the bed.

Three solid strokes with his spend-covered hand and he’s in.

A sharp intake from where they’re joined, she thrusts back in an attempt to fully meet him, but he keeps her steadied. Ben angles her when needed, her pleasure fueling his own. She is breathing in ragged, perfect, heady gasps, a ghost of euphoria glinting across her face. He leans forward, covers her completely, and thrusts his right hand into her hair as his hips meet hers in rhythm.

“Take it,” he says, voice somehow soft with restraint and exertion alike. “Take whatever you need.”

 

When they come, it is as it should be: in unison. A voiceless, dark, unanimous thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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